The Quick 'n' Dirty Update

So... yeah. It's been a long time since I've updated. That this is due to having been extremely busy goes without saying. I may go back and flesh out some details later, but here's a bullet-point survey of what I've been doing:

-- Lords of Misrule's spring production, Apollonius of Tyre (to be performed also at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds in July)

-- finished spring term

-- took a weekend trip back in March to Santiago de Compostela (Spain) with a few friends, during which we mostly drank coffee and sat around doing nothing

-- did a whole lot of nothing over the spring holiday, although I did start learning Old Occitan (famed as the language of the troubadours) for my thesis research

-- decided on my thesis topic. I'll be working with Dr. Peter Biller (http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/hist/staff/biller.shtml) on the liturgy and ritual practice of the Cathar heretics, which we know about in large part thanks to inquisition documents of the 13th and 14th centuries.

-- took examinations in palaeography and Latin, gaining distinction in both (with scores of 75, where 50 is passing and 80 is phenomenal). Too bad they don't actually count toward our degrees.

-- started working on the Lords' summer production of Romeo and Juliet, very tentatively scheduled for August 10-12, in which I have been cast as Mercutio; I'll also be in charge of the fake blood, of which there will be a great deal

-- attended the 42nd annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, four wild days of paper sessions, open bars, fantastic book deals, and the infamous Saturday-night dance where one can see hundreds of world-famous academics thrashing around like they have some sort of motor-neuron disease (in the words of Dr. Guy Halsall). Other adventures that week included the homemade mead-and-ale tasting sponsored by the conference; meeting up with my art-history supervisor from Santa Cruz; leading a motley crew of assorted academics through all the verses of "American Pie" at the traditional Friday-night sing-along; and the taxi driver with the giant dent in the back of his skull. All this apparently qualifies as "networking."

-- as a result of my friend having incidentally met somebody at Kalamazoo, I've somehow ended up with a summer job: translating a number of short poems from English into Latin for a book project about which I know virtually nothing other than that I will be paid for my time and trouble; publication details, I hope, are forthcoming

That pretty much sums it up, I guess. I will resolve to update more frequently, but we'll see how that goes.